Astrogator Wu opined once the Imperial cruiser had safely translated herself away. “If we were, we could've blown her out of the sky and then raided the entire system at our leisure.” I nodded and smiled back. If we’d been Javelin, it would’ve been as if a fox were loose in the henhouse. All the chickens would’ve been fluttering about like mad things, corpses would be strewn everywhere, and the survivors would be screaming for the farmer and his shotgun. As things were, however, everyone was continuing placidly about their routine business. Javelin’s methods were an inefficient way to make war, or so I was beginning to think; while thunderous salvoes and ships blasted from the sky might appeal to a youngster like Wu, well… Once you’d cleaned up a few hundred long-dead corpses, you came to appreciate that a truly intelligent fox would go about things differently. I turned to Parker. “Good work, Josiah.” Then I grinned again. “You’re unbelievably convincing.”
